Young technology innovators ready to represent New Zealand

Young technology innovators ready to represent New Zealand
on the world stageMicrosoft NZ announces winners of
Imagine Cup finals

AUCKLAND, 7 April 2017 – A team
of up-and-coming young software developers is set to take
their cutting-edge innovation to the world as the winner of
this year’s Microsoft Imagine Cup New Zealand.

GroupCram, of Hamish O’Neill, Eric Liu and Nilesh
Magan, was crowned the supreme team at last night’s
Imagine Cup finals, receiving $3,000 and an all-expenses
paid trip to represent New Zealand in the Imagine Cup global
competition in Seattle this July.

Some of New
Zealand’s most creative young minds took part in the
annual Imagine Cup which has now been running for 15 years
and is regarded as the preeminent student developer contest
in the world.

The winning innovation, a student
collaboration app designed to help with studying and group
assessments, was judged the best out of eight impressive
finalists and the team will now test their mettle at the
global finals where there is an additional $100,000 USD in
grand prize money on offer.

Microsoft Director of
Developer Experience Chris Auld says, “Imagine Cup is
about empowering the next generation of young Kiwis to use
technology to shape how we live, work and play. Every day
we’re seeing incredible examples of our students creating
game-changing software, with the potential to be the next
big thing. Together with Microsoft’s Student Accelerator
programme, the Imagine Cup gives them the platform to turn
their ideas into reality.”

This year’s judges
included Dr. Michelle Dickinson a.k.a Nanogirl a senior
lecturer in Engineering at the University of Auckland and an
advocate for encouraging females into STEM subjects, and
this year’s Supreme NZ Women of Influence award winner
Helen Robinson, executive director and co-founder of Organic
Initiative.

GroupCram has big shoes to fill, with
local Imagine Cup teams punching well above their weight on
the global stage. In 2014, Estimeet won the Innovation
Category at the world finals for their social interaction
app which shows the distance and estimated arrival times of
friends.

"The calibre of innovation and creativity
coming from our young developer community is exciting.
We’re confident GroupCram will do New Zealand proud in
Seattle and we look forward to following the journey of each
of our eight finalist teams over the next few years,” says
Auld.

The Imagine Cup forms part of the Microsoft
Student Accelerator (MSA) programme which aims to give Kiwi
students the support they need to launch their career in IT,
including equipping them with soft skills in
entrepreneurship and innovation and facilitating work
experience opportunities with Microsoft and its
partners.

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